Two teens get 18 months of suspended sentence in Cherepovets court for draft office arson

A court in Russia’s Cherepovets has issued a 18 months suspended sentence to two teenagers for setting a draft office on fire, as per the regional courts’ public relations office.

The two were found guilty of attempted arson. They were also put on probation for two years, pleaded guilty, and paid out a 80,000 rubles [€1,260] compensation.

The prosecution’s theory is that in early May an unknown individual, who is a suspect in a separate criminal case, contacted one of the teenagers, born in 2006, on social media and offered him to set a military conscription office on fire for a $5,000 reward. The young man agreed and received instructions on how to create Molotov cocktails, as well as 15,000 rubles [€240] to purchase the ingredients.

After this, the teenager offered an acquaintance of his, born 2005, to commit arson together. The two purchased the ingredients and crafted the flame liquid.

“On 8 May, the two underaged individuals approached the draft office building, used a lighter to set fire to the cocktails, and threw 6 out of the 7 bottles they had into the ground floor windows. The older individual was filming the process using his cell phone in order to send the video to the mastermind,” the PR office says.

It is noted that the teenagers “did not bring the criminal intent to the end” as they failed to smash the windows. They fled the scene, and a few days later the local mayor reported that they had been detained. The mastermind received the arson video and transferred 10,000 rubles [€160] to one of the teenagers as a reward.

After the start of the Ukraine War, numerous videos of draft offices set on fire began to appear on social media. Various local media outlets reported arson in Lukhovitsy, Voronezh, Berezovsky and Shuya. In early May, two Molotov cocktails were thrown into a conscription office in Nizhnevartovsk. Criminal cases were initiated for arson and hooliganism.